


wait for the sun (to make the sky)

by Svennie



Series: the shortest distance between two points [1]
Category: Produce 101 (TV), Wanna One (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-09-28
Packaged: 2019-01-06 11:25:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12210327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Svennie/pseuds/Svennie
Summary: For the longest time, Minhyun thinks his soulmate is Jonghyun.





	wait for the sun (to make the sky)

**Author's Note:**

> my eternal thanks to a., for yelling with me and having no chill while i was writing.
> 
> title taken from "elevate" by st. lucia.

As a child, Minhyun is fascinated by soulmates. His mother tells him he had inherited her love of romance, and five-year-old Minhyun doesn’t really know what romance entails or what the concept of romance even means, but he likes how it sounds anyway. He’s a romantic, he decides then and there.

He asks her about the three Hangeul characters inked in black on his wrist, sometimes. About who she thinks will be his soulmate, and about how he’ll know if he meets the one, even without having to look at his and his soulmate’s wrists to confirm. His mother always laughs, and she places him on her lap.

“You’ll just know it,” she always says. Over and over and over again, until Minhyun stamps it onto his memory, never to be forgotten. “They’ll be beautiful, and you’ll think that they have the most wonderful voice in the world.”

 

* * *

 

When Minhyun starts to go to school, just a few years later, his mother takes him aside and gives him his first wristguard. He wants to object, and he stomps his little feet on the floor and complains—he _whines_ , really—and he only quiets down when she gives him a patient look.

“When you’re a little kid, no one minds,” she tells him. “But as you grow up, your mark is supposed to be a private, special thing. Don’t let anyone use it against you. Don’t let anyone use it to break your heart.”

He doesn’t understand how his mark can break his heart, not quite yet. Hadn’t she told him, before, that the marks are romantic? Hadn’t she indulged him each time he had lifted his arms up to proudly show off his mark? But he obeys anyway—so Minhyun wears his wristguard each time he leaves his home, and whispers a soft apology to his soulmate, who is out there somewhere in Korea just waiting for him, each time the black ink disappears behind his wristguard.

 

* * *

 

For the longest time, Minhyun thinks it’s Jonghyun.

The moment they meet each other as nothing more than Pledis trainees, the moment Minhyun learns his name is Kim Jonghyun, he starts speculating. It’s fate, he thinks. Why else would he be here? What else but fate would put him together with a beautiful boy with a wonderful voice whose initials match the characters on his wrist?

It’s fate, he thinks.

How kind fate is to Minhyun, to give him both his dream—to be an idol, to sing and dance on stage in front of an adoring crowd—and his soulmate, all in one go. The thought of sharing this dream and growing old with the one person just for him makes his heart swell. His entire existence aches with joy, and nothing, _nothing_ can ever take this away from Minhyun.

 

* * *

 

They debut with a bang.

This is enough, Minhyun thinks. It’s enough to be in NU’EST, with four other people who may not be his brothers in blood, but who are damn well close enough anyway. It’s enough to be able to bask in the sunlight and the shadow of Kim Jonghyun.

There’s hope blooming in Minhyun’s chest, still, spreading its roots like a sturdy oak tree each time Jonghyun smiles at him, which is quite often. It doesn’t matter that they never speak of it, that Minhyun isn’t even sure what’s inked on Jonghyun’s wrist. It doesn’t matter that it’s never come up, that Minhyun has never seen Jonghyun’s mark, ever. Fate works in mysterious ways, and it had brought Minhyun to Jonghyun’s side, so he never dares to question it.

It’s the only happy thing, sometimes. It’s the only happy thing left as the lights get dimmer, as the crowds get smaller and the exhaustion starts to settle deep in their bones. As his expectations of idol life slowly fade and shatter, until the five of them don’t even recognize their own selves anymore. It’s still enough to be in NU’EST and to constantly be in the orbit of Kim Jonghyun. Like a moon revolving around a planet.

Which is why it almost breaks Minhyun completely when it happens.

 

* * *

 

They’re in Japan, now. Their idealism had long transformed itself to resignation. Not quite cynicism and not quite hatred, because they have each other, for better or for worse. (And right now it’s for worse. It’s for the very worst.)

Tonight, though. Tonight Jonghyun doesn’t wear his guard, and Minki doesn’t either.

“We want to tell you something,” Jonghyun says, and his voice is the happiest and the least tired it’s been in days.

He and Minki are smiling, but their smiles are softer, shyer, as if there’s a secret that only they know, a soft whisper exchanged only between the two of them. Minhyun realizes, there, that they don’t need to speak at all. He glances at their wrists, their guards off, and the dust settles around him and suddenly everything makes sense.

CMK. KJH.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t think of it anymore. No matter how many times his mark taunts him whenever he takes his wristguard off, no matter how many times the black ink on his pale skin screams out at him, he doesn’t think of it anymore. What’s the point, really? Five lives, including his, are crashing around him. His soulmate can wait.

His soulmate can just never appear, for all Minhyun cares.

“It’s either we disband,” Jonghyun starts to say, “or we take this chance.” His eyes are filled with steely resolve and determination, like he already knows what the rest of them are going to say. He glances at the four of them. It’s quiet for a while.

“Let’s take the chance,” Minhyun eventually replies. “What else do we have to lose?”

Minhyun had taken a chance before, in believing in something he had never been supposed to even consider. But here and now, when the five of them are on the verge of hitting rock bottom (and perhaps they had already hit it, long ago), there’s nothing else to do except to take a chance. His pride can take a back seat. If he can accept that Jonghyun isn’t his soulmate, he can swallow this.

Minhyun’s soulmate can wait. NU’EST always, always, _always_ comes first.

They film their audition videos the next week.

 

* * *

 

There’s a boy here who catches Minhyun’s eyes (and his ears). When Minhyun hears him sing with a guitar as accompaniment, it’s as if time slows down around him. Unconsciously, he rubs at his wrist, caressing the cloth covering his mark.

Kim Jaehwan. That’s the boy’s name.

 

* * *

 

There’s something about this Kim Jaehwan that calls to Minhyun like gravity. He’s known Jaehwan for a grand total of weeks, and yet. And yet he’s never felt a desire stronger than his own desire to hear Jaehwan sing. So Minhyun chooses him first.

(He doesn’t realize that, maybe, this is when everything takes root.)

Minhyun chooses Jaehwan first, always.

 

* * *

 

Jonghyun doesn’t make it. Neither do Dongho and Minki.

But Jaehwan. Jaehwan is here.

It takes a few days, but Minhyun turns out okay.

 

* * *

 

Wannables pair them up for their first reality show. Somehow a part of Minhyun expects it already; after all, he had read the articles about them that had been released just after the show’s finale—Minhyun and Jaehwan, always together, from all their performances in Produce 101 and to their debut, here and now. It’s natural, then, for them to be together in this as well. He hears Jisung talk about it, from the other room.

Jaehwan is the antithesis of everything Minhyun stands for. By all means, they shouldn’t even be friends. Jaehwan is dirty, messy, sloppy, unclean, and every other synonym in the thesaurus. Except Jaehwan also makes him laugh, without any doubt, and back then the only thing that had kept Minhyun from breaking apart at the seams had been the thought of debuting with him. It’s a surprise to Minhyun, how much affection for Jaehwan he holds in his heart.

(That night they sleep in the same bed and, with little else but air between them, Minhyun dreams of the red band tying him to Jaehwan.

He wakes up and doesn’t think much of it.)

 

* * *

 

“Hyung, do you believe in fate?” Jaehwan asks out of the blue.

They’re alone in the practice room, having stayed behind so they can work on the new choreography together. The question takes Minhyun so aback that he doesn’t answer for a few seconds.

“Not anymore,” Minhyun eventually says.

“Why not?”

He wishes, really, that he doesn’t see the way Jaehwan’s expression closes up, even though he doesn’t have a clue why. There’s an unfamiliar weight that is settling in the pit of his stomach, too—something he can’t be bothered to analyze. Instead, he speaks.

“Fate’s disappointed me before,” he says. “I don’t really trust it. I don’t want to trust it.” He doesn’t mention Jonghyun, but the taste and the feel of that name are on the tip of his tongue. It’s not romantic and it’s not even bittersweet, but there’s a tinge of self-deprecation that’s still embedded in his heart. (How stupid of him to believe, before, that these things work out easy, right?)

Jaehwan hums. Minhyun isn’t sure if he’s humming in understanding or in acknowledgment or what. But nothing else is said afterwards, the only sounds filling the practice room being their tired breathing, and there’s a distinct feeling of Minhyun missing a point that awkwardly hangs in the air.

 

* * *

 

Jaehwan is wearing Woojin’s watch today.

It’s unusual to see him without his familiar watch, or without the usual plain wristguard he wears under it as insurance. Woojin sticks to Jaehwan like glue, protective over Jaehwan’s wrist and his mark, as if anyone who gets close enough is going to jump on them and rip off Woojin’s watch, laying Jaehwan’s mark bare.

Seeing this stirs something odd inside Minhyun, like a feeling he thinks he had left long ago in the quiet of a Pledis practice room at two in the morning, when Jonghyun had hugged him and had apologized for not being his soulmate.

Evidently, he is wrong about having left it in the past. Maybe it’s just that his heart is thawing, or his constitution is getting weaker. He isn’t jealous. Not at all.

There’s just something in the air.

 

* * *

 

In an ironic twist of fate, because fate is silly and stupid and likes playing games with Minhyun’s heart, it’s Jonghyun who brings it up. Minhyun has long hung up from their call (a sad ten-minute call that is the only time Minhyun can spare now, due to their schedules and comeback preparations) but Jonghyun’s voice and his unknowingly taunting question still ring in his ears.

“Are you and Jaehwan together yet?” he had asked innocently, right before Minhyun had hung up in shock.

And Minhyun wants to slap himself, really. How silly of him. How silly and idiotic of him to completely miss it. All his life his eyes had been wide open, always searching. And the one moment that he does have it in front of him, he doesn’t see it.

The one moment he has it in front of him, and he refuses to see it.

Jaehwan is beautiful, Minhyun can see that now. The way his cheeks fill out, the way he glows like the gentle morning sunshine when he’s genuinely happy. And his voice is the most wonderful thing Minhyun has ever heard. And _this_. This is something he’s believed to be true since the first time he had heard Jaehwan sing, all those months ago.

Kim Jaehwan. KJH.

 

* * *

 

It echoes through the chambers of his mind for a long, long time before he manages to find a way to do something about it. Popularity is precious, and can be fleeting—and he of all people should know this. It also, unfortunately, comes at a heavy price. The eleven of them barely get enough sleep during the busier days and weeks, and each quiet moment is treasured and should never be disrupted.

Minhyun thinks about how the KJH on his wrist throbs each time he so much as glances in Jaehwan’s general direction, and eventually comes to understand that he cannot afford to expend time and energy into confronting this situation. He really cannot afford to disrupt the only peace the group can get by inviting potential conflict between Jaehwan and himself.

He doesn’t realize that this sort of internal confusion doesn’t go unnoticed by the other members until Sungwoon and Jisung corner him at their dressing room one day, when the three of them are getting ready for their comeback stage and the kids are out filming behind-the-scenes videos.

“Jaehwannie takes his watch off when he washes his face, you know,” Jisung says. An indulgent smile is beginning to form on his face.

“Not that he washes his face all that often,” Sungwoon manages to say through his snickering.

Jisung elbows and shushes Sungwoon. He takes a few steps forward, and gently takes hold of Minhyun’s left wrist. “Minhyun, you should just do it. No matter what happens, you won’t lose Jaehwan.”

 

* * *

 

Minhyun takes a deep breath when he hears the faucet run, and enters the bathroom without knocking.

Inside, Jaehwan is startled, and upon seeing Minhyun at the doorway, he immediately grabs for wristguard. He’s fast, but not fast enough that Minhyun can’t see his bare wrist.

And there it is. HMH, on Jaehwan’s wrist.

 

* * *

 

There’s a boy here who catches Minhyun’s eyes, ears, and heart. A boy who holds Minhyun’s heart close to his chest. A boy who Minhyun never wants to let go of.

Kim Jaehwan. That’s the boy’s name.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for making it this far! i hope you enjoyed it. my twitter is [here](https://twitter.com/botlanes), if you want to talk about anything and everything related to wanna-one. just don't mind my excessive yelling about how beautiful kim jaehwan is.


End file.
